


A Love Story

by Guede



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Future Fic, Idiots in Love, Multi, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Self-Hatred, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 11:15:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5705665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Portuguese mating dance is a prolonged and complicated affair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Love Story

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted in 2009.

The last straw is when he shows up at his football school and a pack of five-year-olds outwalk him, and out of the corner of his eye he sees his own prepaid prehired photog doubled over laughing at him. He’s not goddamn _fat_ , he wants to scream. He’s a retired footballer. His ankles are done in, he’s still got spike scars from the fucking Dutch in two-oh-oh-six and it’s not his job to work himself as skinny as the orphan boys in the street who should be fucking _grateful_ he lets them in his school, those speedy little bastards. He paid his goddamn dues.

He can still kick a ball, by God. It catches the photog just as he’s lifting his head for a gasp and smacks him right in the nose. The blood mist on either side of the ball’s like something out of the movies.

* * *

His school’s director visits him in jail. Damned if Deco can remember where he found such a sour-faced old stick; his old crowd would’ve ran the bastard out on a rail just for the little neatly folded white napkin in his breast pocket.

Old crowd. Deco puts his head between his hands and tries to remember when’s the last time he saw his “crowd.” Ungrateful.

“I just don’t think it’s right,” says the stick. “You’re setting a bad example for these children. Some of them were crying all night. I’ve talked to three parents who want to withdraw their kids.”

“So let them,” Deco mutters. “We’ve got a waitlist. Fuck, when I was their age, I would have dropped to my knees and thanked God.”

“Sir,” says the stick, “I think you might want to consider how your publicity is affecting the school.”

Deco lifts his head onto one hand and looks at him. “People are just jealous, you know.”

The stick purses his lips, looks down at his hands. He moves around a few times in his chair, then takes a deep breath. His shoulders heave under his loose-fitting suit. “Sir. People are laughing at you. There is more than one football school now, even charity-wise. Anderson is opening one this month, and Kaká’s schools are very—”

“Kaká? Don’t even get me started on that freak,” Deco snaps. “You know what’s it about him? Why everyone—”

“Sir,” the stick goes on doggedly, “Kaká’s kept himself in very good shape. When people look at him, they have no problem remembering him as a great player. But you…”

Deco plants his fists on the little wooden table and leans forward. He likes how the wood groans. He’s still a fucking asshole, goddamn it. People are scared of him.

“You should take better care of yourself,” the stick finishes, buttoning up his lower lip.

* * *

When Deco retired he kept most of his money in Europe. Laziness, more or less, since he figured he’d be going back across the Atlantic often enough to get whatever he needed when he needed it. He loved Brazil, had always dreamed of going back and then he had come back like a king, but Brazil was still a crime-ridden disaster with no infrastructure. He’d worked hard enough for two lifetimes to earn his retirement and now that he could enjoy it, he was going to do it with access to things like good roads and tap water that didn’t kill you to drink.

So between the exchange rate and the better banking systems in Europe, he ended up having enough money. The little thing in the jail interview room earned him another couple of months, but he gets his nice separate cell with privileges and everything. Catered food. Private shower. His own TV.

He turns it on once, and watches about an hour and a half of telenovelas before the news comes on. _Shocking development! Former star Deco convicted of assaulting his own employee! We have exclusive footage as the overweight—_

He turns it off and asks them to give him newspapers and magazines instead. The fronts are fine, but every single one of the backpages is plastered with unflattering, horribly retouched photos. For the love of God, if they’re going to smear his name, can’t they at least put some effort into it? Those pictures look like somebody had tacked his head onto a skinned pig.

They give him alcohol, too. He’s always liked partying, but he’s never drank just to drink. He drinks to have fun. He hasn’t ever let it get too far because he knows better.

He doesn’t really remember much till they let him out, and some employee of his picks him up in a shitty little coupe with a dent in the bumper. The backseat is covered in trash and when he roots around for a clear spot, he comes up with a crumpled old paper. _This is not the Deco I know, says Portugal coach—_

Deco throws the paper out the window, then orders the man to drive him to the nearest steakhouse. Even catered, the food in jail had been barely palatable and Deco has been dying for a decent piece of meat. He’s lost nearly a _kilo_ , for God’s sake.

* * *

*No! For God’s sake, you slob, will you think about the children for once? I had to turn off the TV because they showed you getting out of a car and the poor things were _sobbing_ , asking me _Mommy, Mommy, why is Daddy so—_ *

“I tried to get them to take me up to the private entrance! But I told you, that prosecutor’s a whoring slut for fame and he wanted—”

*— _big? Mommy, Daddy looks pregnant! What happened to him?_ My God, I didn’t know what to do. I had a migraine the whole next day, like forks in my eyes—*

Deco slams down the phone and curses. He stares at the wall, then curses some more. Fuck this. He’s been meaning to talk to those fucking lawyers who negotiated his divorces, a nice long talk with a tire iron and maybe some cigarettes to make it interesting. Except he’s never taken up smoking, so he’s going to need to stop at the corner shop first. He needs his wallet.

It takes forever to find the damn thing. Somebody hasn’t cleared off the counter and it’s overflowing with Styrofoam boxes of all shapes and sizes, rotting food and flies stuck inside them. He wrinkles his nose, then remembers it’s his damn house and just tosses the boxes off till he finds his wallet. Then he needs a moment to catch his breath. It’s a lot of boxes.

It’s fucking far to the first lawyering ass’s place, too. The corner shop has some snacks. He’s gonna need some. He’s gonna take his time about it.

* * *

At some point Deco rouses himself from his pork-scented, stale-beer coma and asks somebody where the hell he’s going. “Lisbon,” they tell him.

“Wha—” he grunts, head going back.

He wakes up again long enough to stumble out of the plane, and blink blearily at the customs agent. They’re staring at him, a familiar kind of stare, and he nods wearily.

“God, you really have gone downhill,” they say, and he notices they is a woman with nice breasts in the uniform. “I remember I had the biggest crush on you as a little girl. Glad I grew up. Go on ahead.”

“Bitch,” Deco manages after a moment.

Security tosses him into a taxi. He screams for help and ends up at a nightclub, and thinks he’ll fucking show them. He used to show this whole town how it was done, and he can still do it. He knows nobody like him’s been around since he left, and he knows they miss him.

At some point Deco is on his back, and he’s sick to his stomach and choking and he wants to turn over and just let it all out. Except he can’t turn over. He can’t feel his arms or legs, and above him swirly lights are snickering about his belly. Somebody smacks it hard and the aftershocks are bad enough that they sit him up, and _God_ he’s _dying_ God the _pain_ get him to a fucking _hospital_.

God just laughs at him, like usual. He finishes passing out.

* * *

Deco wakes up in a white room. A hospital room. Everything’s white. The walls are white, the stupid paper gown he’s wearing is white, the sheets are white. The sunlight comes through the window so brightly that even his hands look white. Puffy and white, like marshmallows with IVs punched into their flab.

A nurse comes in and talks nicely but slowly to him, like he’s stupid. He disabuses her of the idea and she shuts up and just brings him his meal. It’s all in little compartments and looks white and inedible, and he’s still staring at it a half-hour later when somebody comes in and hands him a newspaper. It’s folded so when he looks over, he’s looking at a story about his nightclub collapse and dangerously bad health. There’s a picture. In it his belly isn’t white. It’s very pink, like undercooked pork.

“It’s not about my fucking weight,” he says.

“Deco, you’re fat.”

José Mourinho shows up dressed in a black suit, like the Devil. His hair hasn’t even gone white like a decent human being’s, but instead is a uniform gun-grey. He stands there and looks at Deco with that little purse of the mouth and Deco loses it. He throws the newspaper. “I’m not fat! Who the fuck cares about my weight? It’s not my weight that made me retire! I was the fittest fucking one, clubbing or not clubbing! I could’ve beat that fucking teenager they got to replace me fifteen times over, except that goddamn tackle that did my ankle—”

The paper just bounces off José. Doesn’t even leave a wrinkle. Suddenly Deco just can’t stand it and bangs his hands down. His tray comes up, and he gets some food on him but manages to grab something out of the air—hah, fucking _reflexes_. Hah, fucking food on José fucking Mourinho’s fucking _face_.

“—doctors couldn’t do fucking shit, so I’m supposed to retire all graceful, like I’m supposed to forget about the years I still could’ve gone. I couldn’t play in my testimonial! They didn’t fucking care, all I did for them and they just shoveled me out when I was still in surgery and sued to break my contract, and then I can’t see my children, my ex-wives never let me talk to them any more—”

There are so many little boxes on his food tray. It’s like some puzzle they expect patients to fit together. Deco flings them all at José, and when he runs out, grabs the bits of food off his sheets and throws those. Then he throws his sheets. His fucking gown that tears like the paper it is.

“—nobody cares now that I’m gone, nobody fucking ever cared and now that I’m not famous, not fucking Cris Ronaldo with a zillion goddamn ads I can’t even _buy_ it and I’m sick and I miss my kids and I hate you, you smug bastard for making me famous in the first place when you fucking knew I’d end up this way and now you’re coming to gloat and _it’s not about my goddamn fat_!”

Deco does a half-decent job of throwing himself at José. Least, far as he can tell since he passes out during it.

* * *

Next time Deco wakes up in a nice bedroom. It’s all good stuff, but lived in, with chips and discreetly painted-over scrapes. For a moment he wonders if his parents have decided to forgive that one phone call, but then he needs to piss.

He sits up and finds out he’s attached to an IV, but it comes on wheels. Once he’s gotten it around the bed, he sees the gleaming metal boxes and other tubes, and some sheet of paper on a clipboard. When he picks it up, he finds out it’s a doctor’s notes. _Cholesterol, liver,_ he reads. He lets the IV roll over the crumpled-up wad as he stumbles his way to the bathroom.

Nice bathroom, he thinks, flushing the toilet. Then he turns and there’s a mirror on the wall, over the sink. It’s a shitty bathroom. And he’s hungry.

Eventually he finds the kitchen. There’s a woman cooking at the stove, older but boyishly slim. She clearly works at it and he tries to appreciate that kind of effort; all those years of conditioning have left him unable to believe anybody just sits around being blessed by God with perfect toning. Also, whatever she’s cooking smells great.

Deco tries to say hello, but his voice gets stuck. He ducks his head and rubs at his throat, trying to make it work, and José walks in. Stiff muscles are the only thing that keep Deco from throwing the IV stand at him.

“It’s me or a sanatorium,” José says.

“You _made_ me crazy!” Deco’s voice comes unstuck in a terrible loud screech. He’s incredibly, stupidly, childishly pleased at how José squeezes shut his eyes and hunches his shoulders against it. “You fucker. What did you do to me? Where am I?”

José examines his nails. They’re still perfect. “They threw you out of the hospital, Deco. You’re in my home, and I’m going to look after you till you have some sense. Say hi to Tami. You remember my wife, right?”

“He sure still yells the same,” Tami says dryly. She turns around with a panful of steaming sausages. “Lunch?”

Deco leans over and throws up on José’s feet.

“You never had any discipline,” José sighs. “That was always your problem. You could’ve been so much more if you would have just stopped and _been patient_. Listened to me more.”

Deco gets down on his knees. It’s hard, and finally he has to leave his one arm stretched way over his head because otherwise the IV hurts, but he gets down there and then he gags over José’s toes till every single bit of vomit his stomach can make is on the other man.

“I never said you lacked determination.” Something ruffles Deco’s hair, and then the feet turn away. “Those look great. Did you do them with the onions like I like?”

For some goddamned reason, Deco doesn’t pass out right then, so he has to bang his head on the floor till he does.

* * *

The only reason Deco doesn’t leave is because he can’t find what they did with his clothes and wallet, and he’s not going to borrow anything from José. He’s not taking a single goddamn thing, not any more. He turns up his nose at everything Tami tries to feed him (till the goddamn woman should hit him in the head with a plate, but she married José and it shows in how she just snorts and eats it herself) and drinks water only because he doesn’t want to give José the satisfaction of smirking over his coffin. He screams and throws anything within reach whenever José opens his mouth. At some point he manages to dent every trophy and scratch every medal José’s ever won.

“Well, I’m not retired yet. I’ll win more,” José tells him.

Deco has a line of bruises stretching across his forehead from where he’s banged himself unconscious. Then he realizes the lock on his bedroom door works and instead takes to retreating there and sleeping his way through José’s lectures. The man can shout for longer than Deco can hold his fingers in his ears, but the door muffles it enough so that eventually Deco learns to doze through it. Relearn. And he doesn’t need anybody in there—he can change his own IV. He’s not brain-dead and freekicks are more like rocket science than that.

He’s not eating anything, but he still throws up a lot in the toilet. Sometimes it hurts when he needs to piss, and he’s taken to crawling around to keep from getting dizzy. The room’s not big enough to bother with standing, anyway. He’s had worse. Everyone keeps thinking he’s some goddamn idiot, but he’s been places they’ve never been and lived through things they’d scream and faint just at the _sight_ of, and so fuck them. Like they know anything.

He hurts. He hurts everywhere. It’s this old-man ache, like an annoying song humming through his bones except much worse, and it’s summer in Portugal but at night he’s so cold he has to curl up under the blanket and breathe on his knees to keep them warm. He’s so fed up.

One day he gets tired of avoiding that fucking mirror and just smashes it, because why should he put up with it? It should fuck off, not him.

He sits down, staring at the blood on his fingers. It’s been a long time since he’s seen his own blood, and he’s forgotten it’s that red. Somebody knocks at the door, then calls out. Then the door swings open—not kicked in or anything, fucking José and his fucking keys to everything—and José comes in and stands in the doorway.

“I’m shit,” Deco says, small and quiet. He stares at his hand some more.

José pushes behind him. Then comes back and half-kicks, half-yanks Deco out into the bedroom. The imprint of his shoe-tip’s still stinging on Deco’s hip when José comes back with a towel that he uses to get out the shards stuck to Deco’s fingers and then to wrap it all up.

“Yes, you are,” José says, sitting down by Deco. He’s fifty-five and the crow’s feet around his eyes nearly touch the nested arcs of wrinkles around his mouth when he frowns. He looks so goddamn angry Deco almost flinches, and then he smacks his hand through Deco’s hair, the motion sharp as a knife but his palm barely touching Deco. “Goddamn it, Deco.”

Deco tries to tell him to fuck off, but has a problem with his breath. He breathes in, then out, and then he leans over and bawls his fucking eyes out on José’s shoulder. His hand is still bleeding and he’s not holding onto the towel, and through his blurry eyes he can see the blood getting all over José’s knee. José can see too—is seeing, Deco knows that, but he just puts his arm around Deco’s shoulders.

* * *

They had to give him clothes to get the doctor to come. José’s shirt and trousers. Deco wishes he didn’t feel so fucking embarrassed about that, like he’s twenty-five and stupid grateful again.

They’re making him eat at the dinner table. After the doctor and the pills and a shower and José flopping his limbs into new clothes, Deco feels dizzy and weak and just wants to lie down. And he said so, but José leaned him up in the chair and wormed a spoon between the huge bandage on Deco’s hand, and then sat down to the right to say grace. Incredibly, José doesn’t burst into a pile of cinders.

Tami’s on Deco’s other side. She tastes a bit of her vegetables, nods approvingly and then pats his arm. “Go ahead. We’re not that formal.”

“I’m not hungry,” Deco says.

José’s already dealt with a third of his meat. “I don’t care. You need to eat.”

In the midst of Deco’s utter shambles of a life, a tiny memory stirs. He sets his jaw. “I’m _fat_.”

“You’re not. You starved yourself and now you barely fit my clothes. You lose any more and we’ll have to put Tami’s blouse on you,” José says equably, through a mouthful of food.

“You always thought I was your goddamn bitch and I’m not. I never was,” Deco blurts out.

Tami drinks from her cup. “I don’t like that word, Deco. You know that.”

“Fuck you. And where are your kids, if you’re so concerned about being upstanding people?” Deco snarls.

“On vacation with relatives.” José turns and tells Tami the meal is wonderful, and she beams at him.

Deco’s bowl ends up on the floor in pieces, and then he’s got his head down on the table where it was and he’s crying again. Something about Jaciera, his kids, his first wife, his other kids, and his stomach just curls up inside of him and then lashes out, carving him open.

For some reason Tami suddenly has her arm over his back, and she’s petting his hair and talking quietly to him, telling him it’ll be all right. She rubs carefully around the IV needle, where the skin’s bruised up. She’s a lying liar but it quiets the huge sobs coming out of Deco, and then she slides into the seat by him and lets him put his head on her shoulder. It’s bony, pointy at the end but it’s the softest thing he’s ever touched in a while.

He stops crying, and Tami dabs his eyes clear with a napkin. When he can see again, José’s just set down a fresh bowl. Then José and Tami move back to their seats and start eating again. Deco looks at the floor and sees José’s cleaned it up, sort of.

“Just how many plates have I broken?” he asks. His voice is still sort of raspy.

“If you do that one you’ll finish the whole set,” José says.

Deco, incredibly, still has his spoon. He pokes awkwardly at his soup. “You missed a spot on the floor.”

“You’ll clean it up when you’re done,” José says.

The soup mostly falls off the spoon, and then Deco has to close his eyes when the remaining drop touches his lips because he thinks he’s going to gag. He doesn’t. He swallows.

“It’s not bad,” he says.

Tami snorts. “I know. Eat up and then clean my kitchen.”

* * *

José’s away for a while after that. Deco gets his IV out and eats some more and learns that scrubbing with his weaker hand is a pain, and relearns that he always respected Tami a hell of a lot. When he slips up and chucks a tissue-box at her, she whips it out of the air like any good goalkeeper and then zings it right back at him. He needs two bandaids to cover the cut it leaves on his arm.

They sit on the porch in the backyard. “I fucked up a lot,” Deco says.

“Yeah. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you on the TV, Deco. What happened?” Tami shakes a cigarette into her hand.

“I don’t know.” Deco picks at the wrap on his hand. His stitches hurt because Tami won’t give him any painkillers except an aspirin at night, and hot tea any other time. She says he’s on enough pills already and she’s probably right. They fill up a whole side of the counter in his bathroom, and the worst time of the day is when he’s got to take them. He never went for that kind of trouble, anyway, and now he really doesn’t want to. “I got fat.”

“You looked like a little whale in shorts. That arrogant shit Aguero said you looked worse than his goddamn father-in-law at his worst.” She sticks the cigarette between her lips and cups her hands around it. Her fingers glow red, then stop as she clicks shut her lighter. “You fouled him a lot, didn’t you?”

Deco snorts, then runs his good hand through his hair. Then he brings it back down and wipes it over his mouth. He’s grinning.

“You’re skinny as me now,” Tami says. She takes out her cigarette and waves it as she talks, making zigzag smoke trails. “You know, he wasn’t as bad as you wanted him to be. José.”

“He was—” Deco begins heatedly, and then he can’t keep it up. He takes a long breath, then sighs. He’s fucking old. “Maybe, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t wrong. He was always telling me I could be better, I could be really something. I _was_ something.”

Tami flicks ash down the steps.

“Maybe I didn’t want to be great. Maybe I just wanted to set myself up for life. Maybe—”

“He never forgot you,” Tami says, looking at him, steady and plain. “You were always it for him. He had all those others—you were the one he was measuring them up to, you know.”

Deco makes a face. “I hate it when people compare me to other people. I just wanted to be me, all right?”

“You’re not a fat, stupid, helpless little shit. That’s what he was trying to beat into your head, all those years.” Tami drags on her cigarette a last time, then stubs it out on the steps. She picks up her pack, peers into it and frowns. “I’m out. There’s some change on the counter, go down the street and get me a fresh pack. Here, you can have the box so you know what to get.”

She sticks it in his hand and Deco looks at her. Then the carton with its bit of cellophane still sticking up, and then her again. She stares back.

“What,” Deco says. He looks at the carton again, then gets up. “I hate you both.”

“That’s better,” she tells him.

* * *

The first couple times he gets her cigarettes, there’s no problem. The fifth time, he comes back just after José comes back and there are camera crews around the house. José’s not-talking talking to them and there’s a bit of space between them and the gate, and Deco tries to make it. He gets his hand on the latch before his shadow on the fence goes from blurry to crisp in the bright light, and a clamor of voices rises up.

He’s skinny now but it takes forever to build back muscle, and also he’s old and tired. He stumbles on the gravel, then stumbles again as José’s voice futilely shouts behind him. Then he scrapes his hand on the front railing, and when he’s pulling himself up, his feet nearly overwhelmed by the onrushing flood, the front door swings open and Tami comes out.

The front yard is clear in about two seconds, but he and José stand just inside the door and keep watching. José’s grinning like he’s just opened the paper to find some rival coach melting down over his provocations.

“I love that woman,” he says.

Deco smiles too. “She’s great.” He’s not thinking about himself for the first time in years. “I loved you, you bastard. That’s why I hated you.”

José stops grinning. He looks at Deco, then turns sharply and goes up the stairs. After an open-mouthed moment, Deco scrambles after him. He’s played this out in his head a zillion times, angry and sad and happy, sober and so fucking wasted he gave them the wrong names, and he never played it so José said _nothing_. That fucking ass, he thinks it’s like fucking bowling with the machine that endlessly restacks pins, he thinks that he can set Deco up yet again and then—

Deco comes into the bedroom as José drops his duffel onto the bed. His foot goes over the threshold as José flings a suit-bag over a chair. He’s got his mouth open to scream fucking blue murder when José turns around and pushes him over the bed and kisses him, _really_ kisses him. No champagne in their hair, no teammates pushing them together, no delirious exhilaration to make excuses. Just José’s slightly chapped lips and Deco’s cottony mouth because he’s still having problems with retaining water, something about sudden weight loss, and he beats José in the head a couple times before he can bend his hand through its bandage to scratch at José’s hair. It’s too short to grab. José thinks of fucking everything, Deco disgustedly thinks, and then Deco learns he still loves the fucking bastard.

His back starts to hurt. He’s bent funny and he can’t keep it up, he can’t believe he’s thinking about that sort of shit now but he is and he can’t get hold of José to make the man move. Then he does, one hand under José’s arm, but José easily holds him off. And fine, Deco might be over the hill but José isn’t that far from sixty now and for a moment Deco really, honestly thinks he wants to die.

José grunts, then gets off Deco, looking sour. He digs around in his trouser-pocket while Deco heaves himself all the way onto the mattress, then tosses his mobile on the bedside table like it’s a dead rat. Then he gets up onto the bed, over Deco, and pushes Deco down again. Deco thinks he’s a fucking moron for wanting to die, and makes his legs get up over José’s shoulders even though his thighs and hips are killing him, and amid their haphazard undressing, José fucks him stupid. It’s better than the stupid fantasies Deco’s had about it, and Deco’s been working on those for goddamn years so that’s really something.

* * *

Tami whacks Deco high on the ass, dangerously close to where his spine just dissolves into a puddle of ache, and then flips the sheet over him when he scoots over. Part of the cloth sticks to his skin, cold and clammy and gross. He bats at it while she leans over him and kisses José. It sounds a lot more prolonged than Deco can really associate with a marriage that’s lasted as long as theirs, and a lot of that is because he knows both of them too damn well.

“You’re changing the sheets first thing in the morning,” she says to no one in particular (Deco). She skins down under the second sheet, presses up against Deco. Then she snorts and rolls the other way. “You’re so bony. Where’s that food I’ve been feeding you _going_?”

“Mmpf,” Deco says into José’s right ribs.

José has his arm around Deco, and keeps it there, nice and close, till Deco’s too far into drifting off. Then he says: “You should come work on the national team with me.”

Deco is _fucked_. Completely, totally, from his neck to his done-in ankles, fucked. He just goes to sleep.

* * *

In the morning, Deco changes the sheets and eats breakfast and then stands on José’s tactics notebook while José unpacks and screams at the man. “What? _What_? I’m not fucking working for you! I’m not a coach! I don’t have the badges! And even if I did, I’m not coming to work with the national team and fucking well not under you!”

José sorts his socks. “Figo said a lot of the same things. Better cursing, though.”

“You want me to tell you what I think of Figo?” Deco says dangerously.

“You don’t need badges to assist me, and anyway, you need something to do and some of them could use somebody who’s not afraid to throw things at their heads.” Socks done, José pushes the clothes aside and then comes over for his notebook. He looks at Deco, Deco looks back and then José sighs. “You need to come to Lisbon anyway. You have to sign for power of attorney in person.”

With his past, Deco’s picked up enough legal things to know his way around. He feels his nostrils flare. “Oh, you didn’t get that done while I was passed out at the hospital?”

José, says the tilt of his head and the slight twitch of his lips, thinks Deco is an idiot. “Deco, I mean so the attorneys I’ve talked to can work on your behalf to get your joint custody back.”

A few moments pass. Head still cocked, José tries a nudge at Deco and Deco bonelessly lets the other man shove him off the notebook. After he’s picked it up, José clucks his tongue and brushes at the dirty marks on its cover. The floor’s dusty.

“Anyway, I got you to sign up to me years ago. I don’t need to do it again,” José says, walking off. He’s so goddamn right Deco wants to throw something at him just on principle.

“I love you,” Deco says instead. He’s not being sarcastic or anything. He just sort of lets it come out of his mouth.

José pauses, then sticks his notebook under his arm and comes back. He kisses Deco on the mouth, then the brow. When he steps back, his fingers drag briefly through Deco’s hair.

“You’ll just help with setpieces in the beginning. I’m still trying to shake out the technical staff,” José tells him.

Deco sits down on the floor and looks at his bandaged hand. He pulls up his shirt, his trousers and looks at the stretch marks on his belly and thighs, still freshly purple. He rubs his nose, then sighs. “You’re just going to get me, you know.”

“That’s fine. That’s all I’ve ever looked for, anyway,” José says. Then he looks at Deco over his notebook, hard and long. “And I know you’ll be _fantastic_.”

Deco goes to the bed so he can throw socks at José. He’s horrible and he misses with all of them even though the room’s not that big and José just stands there reading his tactics notes. And then Deco goes downstairs to help Tami in the kitchen.

“I need a suitcase,” he says.

She shakes her hands free of the foam and wipes them with a towel. Then she turns around, poking at the mail and leaving one-handed him with the dishes. “I put mine out on the porch to air out. You can use that.”

The only reason Deco doesn’t start smashing dishes is because he’ll cut up his other hand and then he can’t sign anything. “I’m going to see my kids again,” he says.

Tami pitches a letter in the trash. Then she comes up to his right side and hugs him, with her hands in his hair. When she leans back her eyes are wet. “Good for you.”

Deco sniffs, then snorts it back rudely. He can’t fucking cry, he tells himself. He can’t wipe his eyes right now without getting soap in them, and Tami’s not going to wipe them for him again.

“And you tell Cristiano to lay off the Botox and stop whining about my husband to the press,” Tami says, smiling through her tears. She ruffles his hair. “I’ve got to get the kids off to university and don’t have time to kick his ass.”

“Okay,” Deco grins. He sniffles again, still grinning. “Okay.”

* * *

Being on the far side of thirty hasn’t improved Cristiano at all. He crosses his arms and narrows his eyes and looms over Deco in a deliberate way that he never would’ve done ten years ago. “Why aren’t I starting?”

They’re in a full dressing-room, and José is at the door talking to somebody in the hall, and probably there are reporters around. Whatever. “Because you are fucking _shit_ , Ronaldo! You don’t half-try and when you do it’s to fall over and waste everybody’s time getting stupid yellow cards, and you aren’t so fucking good that you can get away with it now! You are _not_ a beautiful and unique snowflake, you fucking moron! You are an overpaid, spoiled hag with eyebags!” Deco screams. “You fucking try like everyone else or you can fuck off!”

Cristiano’s eyes weren’t that big when he was a baby, probably. He stares, and then he unfolds his arms and starts to sputter but it’s too late, he’s let it go too long without a good reply and even now his reply’s shit. He still tries till somebody, probably Quaresma with that hopeless crush, tells him it’s not worth it.

“It’s not worth it?” Cristiano repeats, over-stressing the disbelief. He looks around at everyone. “What? Did you hear what he just said? Did you _hear_?” He grabs randomly and ends up with Figo. “Did you hear that? He just said that to me! Well?”

“Also, I had better hair when I was your age,” Figo says after a moment of thought.

People start to snicker. Cristiano whirls about, faster and faster, helpless but pride keeping him there till finally he’s too dizzy to resist Nani’s and Quaresma’s efforts to drag him into the showers. Deco breathes slowly in and out and Figo looks at him, all lazily quizzical, so Deco stomps out in the other direction.

José finds him tossing towels around in some room that Deco doesn’t even know what it’s meant for. “You did all the hard work,” José says.

“I know! I know and still he goes and he—” Deco shakes a double fistful of towels in José’s face “—I want to punch him more than Cristiano, because he _knows_. He knows what he does, he does it on purpose and—”

“Yes, and it serves a purpose and that’s why I have him here,” José tells him.

So Deco flings the towels up over them. “So what purpose do I serve this time? So why am I here?”

“Deco, you don’t serve a purpose. I could do this without you. We were already top of the group when I brought you in. You’re here because I want you here,” José says.

Deco stands. Then sucks in his breath, and then flings his arms around José and shoves them back into the door. They’re knee-deep in towels and on the other side Cristiano has finally started shrieking, and somewhere Figo’s still being smug and of course Deco’s life still isn’t much more than tatters but Deco really fucking doesn’t care because he’s finally listening and José’s just told Deco he loves him. So fuck it all. He’s going to kiss José and for once the other man’s going to stand there and take it.

He’s not fat. He’s in love.

**Author's Note:**

> One day applegnat (LJ) dug up a [photo of a bare-chested Maradona](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/25/argentina?gusrc=rss&feed=football) (post-retirement) and commented that it was a presaging of Deco in about ten years. It was a truly horrifying photo, and a truly horrifying thought, which type tends to hang around like a canker sore. That's where this story came from.


End file.
